bought for Compiano's birthday in August ( )

This is a collection of graduation speeches given by Kurt Vonnegut between 1969 and 2004, along with a few other bits and pieces he wrote or delivered as speeches for other occasions. (At least, the expanded third edition that I have includes the extra bits and pieces, anyway.)

And, man. Vonnegut. What the hell can you say about Vonnegut? Even in moments here where I don't entirely agree with him (and I do agree with him about a lot), I still feel like I just want to sort of... roll around in his brain. Which this collection does kind of make me feel like I'm doing. He's weird, sharp, rambly, earthy, insightful, satirical, funny, humane... Basically, all the adjectives. There are occasional moments where I want to pull quotes out of here and just, I dunno, engrave them in foot-high letters on a plaque in Washington D.C. or something. And one particular piece -- "How to Be a Wise Guy or a Wise Girl" -- just left me sitting there afterward going, holy crap for several minutes. That one feels every bit as desperately relevant today as it did when he wrote it in 1981, and genuinely feels like he's put his finger on a major component of whatever the hell is wrong with the world.

I will say that not all of these speeches affected me equally, and as a whole the collection does suffer from being more than a little repetitive. There's enough variety between the speeches to make all of them worth reading, but there are, understandably enough, particular points he clearly liked to make over and over for these occasions, and particular jokes and anecdotes he tended to repeat. Not all of them are his best or most interesting points, either, in my opinion, although the story about his uncle that lends the collection its name is one that is well worth internalizing. Sometimes, when you're experiencing a moment of quiet, simple, contented happiness, it surely is a good thing to notice the fact, and lean back, and say, "Well, if this isn't nice, what is?" ( )